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Hoblitzelle Foundation endowment creates Anderson Professorship

Dr. Ron Andersonn

The Hoblitzelle Foundation has honored retiring Parkland Health & Hospital System leader Dr. Ron Anderson with a $100,000 gift to Southwestern Medical Foundation. The gift will endow the Ron Anderson, M.D., Professorship in Clinical Care and Education at Parkland Memorial Hospital, which will support the work of a faculty physician practicing at Parkland who shares the values and commitment of Dr. Anderson.

“We wanted to honor Ron Anderson for his longtime service to Parkland and its patients and to recognize his great devotion to the medical care of the underserved,” said William T. Solomon, Chairman of the Hoblitzelle Foundation. “He has played a unique role in his stewardship of charity care in our community, and his dedication to the people of Dallas remains a true inspiration.”

Dr. Anderson is the former Presi­dent and CEO of Parkland, a position he held for nearly three decades. Since No­vember 2011, he has served as senior consultant to Parkland’s CEO. He be­came the CEO of Parkland in 1982, which, under his lead­ership, grew to become one of the largest public hospitals in the country.

“I am moved by the graciousness of this honor and am ever grateful to the Hoblitzelle Foundation for its ongoing investment in medical care and education at Parkland and UT South­west­ern,” Dr. Anderson said. “This contribution will be a great asset as we search for new ways to reach and treat vulnerable populations throughout our community.”

In 1985 Dr. Anderson played a major role in the passage of landmark legislation in Texas that banned “patient dumping,” the practice of transferring medically unstable and uninsured patients to another hospital. Dr. Anderson quickly became a national spokesperson on the issue, and his work helped lead to the passage of federal legislation signed into law in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.

He has received numerous awards and honors, including the J. Erik Jonsson Ethics Award from the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at Southern Methodist University, the American Hospital Association’s Award of Honor and the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence. In 2005 he was chosen by his peers as the most powerful physician executive for Modern Physician magazine and as the most powerful person in healthcare for Modern Healthcare magazine. He has served on the National Health Policy Initiative to advise the White House on health care issues and on the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured since 1992. He was elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine in 1997.

“The Hoblitzelle Foundation’s latest gift is a wonderful testament to the incredible impact that Ron Anderson has had on the lives of so many in need of medical care and on the Dallas community at large,” said Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky, President of UT South­west­ern. “The foundation’s generosity will further enhance the quality of care provided to Parkland patients by UT Southwestern physicians, while paying tribute to Dr. Anderson’s com­pas­sionate leadership.”